Erica Hejnar and another woman were arrested for "suspicion of drug possession." That's strike one against the Philadelphia Police Department, because neither woman had any drugs.

Hejnar and her friend were eventually released without charges, but not before Officer Norberto Cappas ordered them "to kiss and touch each other and expose their breasts."

Hejnar and her friend told Internal Affairs that Cappas dangled the keys and taunted them as he escalated his sexual demands, telling them they would do as he asked if they wanted to go home that night.

That's strike two. Strike three: Henjar collected $17,500 from the city, "in part because city lawyers concluded that she never should have been detained in the first place." No kidding. It's difficult to imagine that there was probable cause to arrest two women for drug possession who weren't in possession of drugs.

Strike two was enough to get Cappas fired, at least for now. A police tribunal found him guilty of conduct unbecoming an officer and of lying during a departmental investigation. The police commissioner canned him, effective at the conclusion of a 30 day suspension. But Cappas may still convince an arbitrator to overturn the commissioner's decision.

Digby and many others have written about this TNR article about the National Review cruise. I was struck by this excerpt:

D'Souza summarizes the prevailing sentiment by unveiling what he modestly calls "D'Souza's law of immigration": An immigrant's quality is "proportional to the distance traveled to get to the United States." In other words: Asians trump Latinos.

Being an Indian immigrant, who justified bin Laden and Al Qaida by saying:

Muslims must rise up in defensive jihad against America because their religion and their values are under attack. This aspect of Bin Laden’s critique has been totally ignored, and it’s one that resonates with a lot of traditional Muslims and traditionally people around the world . . .

I think maybe D'Souza might want to be more careful about that. As Jane Galt has pointed out, no Mexicans have perpetrated terrorism in the United States. It was folks from far away, some from near where D'Souza's people came from.

Jon Chait:

Yesterday, Rudy Giuliani traveled to Regent University to kiss the ring of Pat Robertson. For those who don't recall, Robertson is not just a strong social conservative, he's a raving loon. . . . When conservatives are forced to address the subject of Robertson, they usually insist that he's a marginal figure. That's basically what liberals say when forced to discuss the likes of Louis Farrakhan, who is a very close parallel to Robertson. But you don't see Democratic presidential candidates seeking out Farrakhan's warm public embrace. So why isn't the Giuliani-Robertson story getting much national attention?

Andrew Sullivan writes:

Instead of conflating all the moral issues, [Americans between 18 and 29] have no problem with gay dignity and equality, but retain many of the moral conflicts of their parents with respect to the far more troubling issue of abortion.

What did the poll Sullivan cites for this argument actually say?

A Georgia judge has denied bond for Genarlow Wilson, opining that the state statute does not allow for appeal bonds on the crime of which he was convicted.

His lawyer disagrees, saying Genarlow's case is a habeas case and the Judge looked at the wrong statute.

On June 11, as TChris wrote, Genarlow was ordered released from his 10 year sentence for having consensual oral sex with a girl who was only two years younger.

While serving his sentence, Genarlow filed a Habeas Petition, arguing the sentence violated the 8th Amendment ban against cruel and unusual punishment. It was granted. It is the state that is now seeking appellate review of the habeas decision. So which statute should apply, the habeas or the appeal bond?

More....

Newsweek examines teen drinking this week. Experts say pot is better for them than alcohol:

Even if they don't become alcoholics, teens who drink too much may suffer impaired memory and other learning problems, says Aaron White of Duke University Medical Center, who studies adolescent alcohol use. He says parents should think twice about offering alcohol to teens because their brains are still developing and are more susceptible to damage than adult brains.

"If you're going to do that, I suggest you teach them to roll joints, too," he says, "because the science is clear that alcohol is more dangerous than marijuana."

The DEA of course sends a contrary message. Just last week, Mark R. Trouville, chief of the DEA's Miami office, announced at an indoor marijuana grow bust:

"This ain't your grandfather's or your father's marijuana," Trouville said. "This will hurt you. This will addict you. This will kill you."

When many progressives railed and rallied for a primary challenge to Senator Joe Lieberman, the contempt and disdain heaped on them (I was one) from the Media and the Right was piled high. It will be interesting to see how the Media covers the growing GOP Primary Fever, which started with urging John Bruning to challenge Chuck Hagel in Nebraska:

An Instapundit reader later urges primary challenges for compromise supporters, Kausfiles seconds the idea. Riehl World View is just done with the whole party.

Mickey Kaus, whose political affiliation seems to be Republican but it is not always easy to tell if he is just an independent, writes:

the prospect of political defeat is the thing politicians most understand. (The money helps them avoid the defeat.) That means the most effective thing that could be done to pressure pro-comprehensive Senators is to start organizing actual campaigns against them--primary challenges, but also general election challenges to Republicans from anti-comprehensive Dems, and vice-versa. It's easy to organize on the Web, and by organizing now you might get your Senator to change his or her vote. Once the vote is cast it's too late. ...

The vituperative Mickey Kaus! Who'da thunk it? But all kidding aside, I applaud these attempts to organize "people power." I think political parties should be where ideas are debated, and primaries are the right vehicle. I think every candidate should be primaried, even the ones I like.

Matt Yglesias revisits the points he and I made yesterday about the emptiness of the Lugar/Voinovich "opposition" to Bush's Iraq policy:

When Republicans want to . . . vote to override Bush's veto, then they'll be breaking with Bush on Iraq. Until then, both the ones talking a good game and the ones talking bad one are, in fact, backing the president. What's more, it seems to me that we're well passed the point where any political purpose is advanced in a useful way by deliberately exaggerating the extent of intra-GOP disagreement. Before the 2004 election was a good time to hear about Republican dissent. Before the 2006 election, even. But folks who wait until after an electoral drubbing to start distancing themselves from their party's leaders don't deserve to be hailed as great independent thinkers.

Two points. First, the legislation Bush vetoed did not even have BINDING timelines. Second, when Matt writes "both the ones talking a good game and the ones talking a bad one are, in fact, backing the president," that applies to Democrats too.

The day job beckons and it's time for an open thread. What's going on in your world today and which items in the news and on the blogs have caught your attention?

Are any of you buying Apple's hyped i-Phone which hits the stores Friday? If so, why? What makes it so special?

Three important wrongful convictions bills has passed the state Senate and now been cleared by the Assembly Public Safety Committee in California:

One bill, aimed at reducing the number of false confessions, would mandate electronic recording of interrogations of suspects in homicides and violent felonies who are in police custody. Another would require corroborating evidence for the testimony of jailhouse informants, who have been shown to lie sometimes to receive reduced sentences or other benefits. A third bill calls on the California attorney general, in consultation with other key stakeholders in the criminal justice system, to develop new guidelines for lineups presented to eyewitnesses to see if they can identify suspects.

All three are desperately needed. Releasing the innocent imprisoned makes it easier to find the guilty perpetrator. So, will Gov. Schwarzenegger come up with some new excuse to veto the bills if they pass, or will he finally see the light of day and sign them into law?

Similar measures passed both houses last year, but were vetoed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Since then, the legislation has been modified to address the governor's concerns, said Gerald Uelmen, a Santa Clara University law professor who is executive director of the justice reform commission.

According to a new New York Times/CBS News/MTV poll, young Americans are leaning left.

Young Americans are more likely than the general public to favor a government-run universal health care insurance system, an open-door policy on immigration and the legalization of gay marriage, according to a New York Times/CBS News/MTV poll. The poll also found that they are more likely to say the war in Iraq is heading to a successful conclusion.

More good news:

Substantially more Americans ages 17 to 29 than four years ago are paying attention to the presidential race.

....More than half of Americans ages 17 to 29 — 54 percent — say they intend to vote for a Democrat for president in 2008. They share with the public at large a negative view of President Bush, who has a 28 percent approval rating with this group, and of the Republican Party. They hold a markedly more positive view of Democrats than they do of Republicans.

It gets better. More below.

From the fourth installment of WaPo's Cheney series:

In Oregon, a battleground state that the Bush-Cheney ticket had lost by less than half of 1 percent, drought-stricken farmers and ranchers were about to be cut off from the irrigation water that kept their cropland and pastures green. Federal biologists said the Endangered Species Act left the government no choice: The survival of two imperiled species of fish was at stake. Law and science seemed to be on the side of the fish. Then the vice president stepped in.

. . . Smith [knew] Cheney . . . as a man of the West who didn't take kindly to federal bureaucrats meddling with private use of public land. "He saw, as every other person did, what a ridiculous disaster shutting off the water was," Smith said. . . . [Interior Secretary Gail] Norton flew to Klamath Falls in March to open the head gate as farmers chanted "Let the water flow!"

. . . Months later, the first of an estimated 77,000 dead salmon began washing up on the banks of the warm, slow-moving river. Not only were threatened coho dying -- so were chinook salmon, the staple of commercial fishing in Oregon and Northern California. State and federal biologists soon concluded that the diversion of water to farms was at least partly responsible.

. . . Last summer, the federal government declared a "commercial fishery failure" on the West Coast after several years of poor chinook returns virtually shut down the industry, opening the way for Congress to approve more than $60 million in disaster aid to help fishermen recover their losses. That came on top of the $15 million that the government has paid Klamath farmers since 2002 not to farm, in order to reduce demand.

Nice work Dick.